Add and Tracks new Views with Git/Github

Play with the Data

In order to play with the data, you can simply download the zip file on the github repository (here).

Doing so, all the changes that you will make won’t affect the Github reposity.

Participate to InSciOut project

To participate to InSciout, you need to be able to push your changes to the remote server (i.e., the Github repository).

What is Github ?

A Github repository is similar to a Google Drive or Dropbox folder – it reflects a folder on your local machine. However, Github does not synchronise your files automatically, you need to explicitly upload your local folder (i.e. tu push) on the remote repository (i.e. the Github repository). Then each time you make changes to your local folder, you will need to push explicity the change made in the local folder to the remote repository.

This may seems cumbersome but Github is made to collaborate on writing text files (e.g. source code). With Google Drive, you could modify a file that one of your colleagues modified too, without noticing. Google drive may chose to overwrite the change of your colleague or to make two files. Github solves the problem.

Installing Git/SourceTree

These actions need to be perform only once to get the InSciOut repository on you PC.

You need to:

• get an account at Github,
• install Git from here,
• install SourceTree from here

In Source Tree, you need to add your GitHub account. This can be done during the installation, as describe here or after you run SourceTree, as described here.

Versionning with Github

Github is named after Git, which is a version control software. Basically, it allows you to make a snapshot of your local folder at any time you want (i.e. to commit a change). By commiting your changes each time you did a meaningful progress, you can track your changes, come back to an earlier version, take a file from an earlier snapshot, etc… Such a folder that is tracked by Git is named a Git repository; each snapshot is a “version” of the repository.

Github is made to work with a Git repository. When we first create the InSciOut folder on our machine, we initialised Git in our local folder to make the InSciOut folder a ‘Git repository’. Then, we upload the Git repository (containing the list of all our snapshots made with Git) to Github. From then, each time we commit a change (i.e. snapshot), we can push it to the remote server (i.e. upload it to Github).

Initialization:

First commit:

First Push:

Second commit:

Second Push:

Merge Conflicts

Because Github works with Git, it can manage conflicts when a file is modified by several persons. It happends that several persons start to make changes from the same version of the repository. While you commit you changes, Git will read the different files in the repository and detect the changes made to the previous version. If nobody changed the same part/lines of the previous version, Git will merge the change automatically. If two persons changed the same part/lines of the previous version, then Github will raise a merge conflict. In this case, the users will need to agree on what to keep, and re-commit the changes to Git.

Collaborative Workflow

While collaborating, you will be using this workflow (Centralized Workflow): https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/comparing-workflows#centralized-workflow

Basically you need to check the box [rebase] in preference of SourceTree. Then each times you want to share your changes: - commit (if not already) - pull - [solve conflict if any] - push

Note that you can commit locally any many times as you want before to share your changes.